40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Psalm 11 (Episode 406)

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Chad and Daniel discuss Psalm 11. Have a listen! Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube  What's New from 1517: Remembering Rod Rosenbladt Preorder: Encouragement for Motherhood Edited by Katie Koplin Preorder: Be Thou My Song by Kerri Tom Here We Still Stand 2023 Videos are Available on YouTube Last Chance: NWA Conference May 3rd-4th  More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird

Welcome to the Psalm Companion of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament, of course, is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. We are in Psalm number 11. This is to the choir master of David, of course. So we are assuming this, of course, is a Psalm of David then. Yeah, it's pretty short, seven verses. So got some good material in here.

Starts out, well, let me just read the whole thing. Only seven verses. I'll read the whole thing, then we'll go back to it. In the Lord I take refuge. How can you say to my soul, lead like a bird to your mountain? For behold, the wicked bend the bow. They have fitted their arrow to the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart. If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

The Lord is in his holy temple. The Lord's throne is in heaven. His eyes see. His eyelids test the children of men. the lord tests the righteous but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence let him rain coals on the wicked fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup for the lord is righteous he loves righteous deeds the upright will behold his face so that opening part uh and i tried to read it in such a way that i communicated that but

And it seems to be like, okay, somebody's in trouble, David, presumably here. So David starts out by saying, listen, I'm going to take refuge in the Lord. So there's obviously some sort of danger, some sort of threat, right? That's pretty clear. You've got these enemies that are like archers with their arrows already on the string, and they're hiding in the darkness, and they're ready to shoot. So David says, look, I'm going to take refuge in the Lord. So how can you say to my soul, and you here, I'm assuming, are like his comrades, his friends.

So they're saying, look, David, you're in trouble. So, quote, flee like a bird to your mountain to fly away. Get out of here. Why? Because, well, the wicked, they're bending their bow. They've fitted their arrows on their string. They're going to shoot at you. And if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?

so if if i'm reading this correctly if if we lose you the king then what are we going to do like our foundation is destroyed so you need to run away uh then david transition says listen i'm not worried the lord is my refuge and he's in his holy temple he's in heaven and he sees everything. He sees everything that you see, but he sees it with much greater clarity. Yeah, this is a kind of interesting start to a thing, start to a psalm, right? So he starts with this statement, right, that it seems that the people who are going to say this to him know, maybe he's said this to them, in fact, that this is what everyone should know about him is that in the Lord I take refuge and the reason I say that they know this because

it's implied if you know that how are you gonna say I should run yeah like I already said that I was taking refuge in the Lord like yeah but you should run well that's not taking refuge in the Lord I'm taking refuge right here in the Lord how are you gonna tell me that I need to go run because there's arrows and they're going to come and shoot the upright in heart in the middle of the night. How are you going to tell me this when I've already told you where my refuge is? I don't take refuge elsewhere, like out there. That's not where I take refuge.

I take refuge in the Lord. And then he, after that quote, then moves on to say, trust me, the Lord is in his holy temple. Yeah, yeah. So he's in his temple, and then he adds to that, the Lord's throne is in heaven. So, of course, this is kind of the image of, we got two things going on at once.

So you have the earthly temple, which later on, it wasn't built in David's time, it was built in Solomon's time. So you got that. But you also have that being a reflection of the heavenly temple, which maybe is what David is talking about here, which is kind of the direction I would lean, because he goes on to say the Lord's throne is in heaven. So all this stuff is going on down below. You've got me in danger, but you have God above. So the heavens aren't, there's not like a wall between us and heaven. God sees what's happening.

It's not a closed heaven. He sees his throne is in heaven. His temple is in heaven. And as I see his eyelids are going to test the children of man. He sees everything that's going on. and because of that i know that i'm going to be safe in him why because the lord is going to kind of filter out he's going to test the righteous he's going to uh refine us as silver is refined and then after testing the righteous his soul not does he but it's literally his soul

his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence that is he's he's going to be on the side of the ones that he has claimed as his own he's going to test the righteous the ones he's made righteous the ones he's claimed as his own yeah he's going to test them but he's going to remain with them he's going to protect them because he's opposed to the wicked and the lovers of violence and these lovers of violence are obviously the ones that are referred to earlier where you have the wicked who are bending the bow and making their ready making ready their arrows on the string to shoot at him. And that's basically David's confidence, that he's safe in the one who sees what's going on, and the one who's going to stick by the righteous and then

work the ways of the wicked. Yeah, and in this particular psalm, unlike some other psalms, of course, where you might cry out and say, how long, where are you, what are you doing? This is a little bit different for David, because David is saying, I know where God is. God hasn't gone anywhere. So God is in his place, right? So I've taken refuge in God, and if you want to know where God is, well, he's in his temple. He's in his throne in heaven. He is in the place that he always is. He is in his place of power and authority above all things. And so since God hasn't gone anywhere, I don't need to go anywhere. God, I know where he is, which is not always the case in Psalms.

Sometimes David feels like he's not sure where God is. But in this particular Psalm, he's saying, I'm not going to run because I'm confident that God is in his place. Yeah, and that's the beauty of the Psalter, that all of these different kinds of Psalms are there to cover all the different scenarios in life. Because, I mean, there are Psalms where David is on the run. I mean, he's fleeing from Saul quite a bit.

Here he's not. He's sticking to his guns because he knows that his refuge is in the Lord, and he knows it's going to be safe in him. Now the next psalm, maybe it doesn't, but could, the next psalm could have him crying out, Where are you? Why are you hiding your face from me? So this back and forth we have in the psalms, it's a reflection of the back and forth that we have in our own life.

This too flies in the face of, I think, a pretty common perception that people have. if they do if they are deist or theist especially if they're deist they kind of have this idea that god is god exists but it's not like he's watching closely everything that's going on in the world it's much more of a detached deity who's maybe made everything or at least put everything into motion and then it's kind of you know moved far away and is doing his own thing or not doing anything, but anyway, is not intimately involved in all of the activities of this world. That's a pretty common perception that people have, especially if they're more on the deistic scale of belief. But the Old Testament knows nothing of that. Rather, God sees everything. He's right

there. The throne is in heaven. Everything is open before him. So he sees, in fact, much more clearly than we ever do. He sees everything. He sees us better than we see ourselves, and he certainly sees when the wicked have put the arrow in the string, and they're getting ready to shoot at us. He's going to turn things around and say, oh, the wicked, they've got their arrows. God has other weapons. So verse six is, let him rain coals on the wicked. fire and sulfur that also is traditional translation is brimstone fire and brimstone and a scorching wind is going to be what's inside their cup for them to drain to drain to the dregs of course this is i mean this is genesis language right this is sodom and gomorrah

uh that uh that david is drawing upon same two words fire and sulfur fire and brimstone are used in Genesis chapter 19 that were rained down from heaven. So it becomes the canonical, the paradigmatic image of God meting out justice upon those who refuse to repent. And so he's taking a page from Genesis 19 to talk about what God is going to do to the current adversaries that he faces. First of all, there's going to be these rain of coals, but also another pretty common biblical image

that uh this bad stuff this poison this suffering is going to be a cup that they're going to be forced to drink so you got positive and negative images of cup in the old testament you think of psalm 23 my cup runneth over uh i will lift i lift up the cup of salvation to call upon the name of the lord those are all of course good positive images but in the especially in the prophets and sometimes in the Psalms also. The cup is used in a judgment scene. Jeremiah talks about how God is going to fill the cup with his anger and his wrath, and then he's going to take it around to the various nations and force them to drink from it. It's kind of an image of, you know, if you have to drink hemlock, drink poison to be put to death. So here it's the fire and the

brimstone and the burning wind that's going to be the portion of their cup. By the way, I think that's the uh this is kind of an aside but i think that's the background of the garden the gethsemane scene where jesus says my father if it's possible take this cup from me yeah it's the yeah it's the cup of a cup of judgment a cup of of of the cup of death the cup of suffering the cup of wrath all of that old testament stuff is bound up in what jesus prays there let this cup pass from me because he knows he's about to drink down that which is going to be full of pain and suffering and death itself. Yeah, and the

part of when it talks about the judgment of God, there's sort of this it's always huge. I mean, we have this idea that there's a little bit of karma floating out there, and you do a little bad, you're going to

get a little bad, and you do a little good, you're going to get a little good. And that's not the way the Bible talks about this stuff at all. I mean, David has to say, hey, you just wait and see what's going to happen. You're not going to miss this. I mean, it's going to be like coal and fire and sulfur and scorching winds and all this kind of stuff, and that might not happen today.

It might not happen tomorrow, because that's not how the judgment works. And you can see this in verse 7 where he says, For the Lord is righteous, and he loves righteous deeds. The upright shall behold his face. This is the reward of the righteous, is that you get to see God. But what is it that makes someone righteous? And what is it that would make their deeds righteous? You just go back to the beginning, and you just say,

in the Lord I take refuge. So the contrast here is that the Lord can be the thing that you take refuge in, or you can get sulfur and brimstone and scorching winds and all this. these are the options and it isn't this sort of thing that's sort of doled out incrementally where it's like David's not like well

the people that are after me they're bad and so probably they're going to go home and their cow will have died or whatever something bad's going to happen to them and I'm being good and so tomorrow is probably going to be

a great day for me no the judgment is all of this cup that you have to drink down, and the reward for the upright is that you will get to see God. But this all gets doled out at the end, because if you read

this language, you're like, well, this sounds like final judgment kind of language, which I think is exactly what it is. Yeah, yeah. So either way, you get God. It depends on what kind of God that you're going to get. Either behold His face, or you're going

to get the God who hands you the cup of fire, sulfur and scorching scorching well he's either your refuge or your judge right i mean he's your refuge or your enemy yeah yeah there's no there's no in between yeah and by the way this uh in hebrew i don't know why the translators decided to translate the same hebrew verb as see and then as behold but it's the same one so when we verse four where god's eyes see what's going on that same word is used at the very end where the upright shall see his face so it's a beautiful beautiful uh pairing there god sees what's happening in this world and ultimately the ones that he has declared to be righteous in christ will see him who sees them they will

behold his face awesome well all right there you go there is psalm number 11 uh we will tackle psalm 12 next time chad i will see you then see you then We'll see you next week.